2025 Scoreboard

At the beginning of 2025, Lamplighter made three predictions about the portfolio. Here they are, along with the results.

1. In 2024, no companies in the Lamplighter portfolio managed to attract buyout offers. That was odd. Usually more than zero companies in the LCM stable get picked up in a year.
   Deal activity ebbs and flows for a variety of reasons. 2024 was a lull. Lamplighter expected 2025 M&A to open up compared to 2024. Lamplighter's first prediction for 2025: one or more companies in the portfolio would be acquired.
   In mid-October, Greek lottery operator, OPAP, agreed to sell itself to Allwyn, a gaming and lottery company operating in Europe and North America. Finally. That's one sale. That meets the prediction, but only just. One for one.

2. The firm's second prediction for 2025 portfolio, also deal related: one or more companies in the portfolio would split apart.
   Sunrise Communications spun off from Liberty Global in November of 2024. That one doesn't count. As part of the review that led to that separation, management laid out plans to shed some or all of its remaining operating businesses. Those plans didn't make progress 2025. No splits.
   IDT was another candidate for a break-up. It has four or five businesses that it could possibly separate and a management team with a history of doing just that. Not this year, though. There are a few other companies in the portfolio that could spin-off businesses to unlock value too, but none of them announced spins either. One for two.

3. Nvidia took all the AI airspace in 2024. But it wasn't the only company in that ecosystem — there are other chip makers, memory makers, data center operators, frontier model developers, even power companies have an AI angle.
   Some companies left in Nvidia’s AI wake in 2024, caught the wave in 2025. They caught it hard. LCM's biggest returns in 2025 came from AI or AI-adjacent things. Planet Labs smashed its core business in 2025. That business benefits from AI processing the images its satellites take to help customers make decisions. But the AI cherry-on-top came when they won a contract with Google for a program to pilot space-based, sun-powered data centers in space. This would be a new business. Its just a pilot program and may come to nothing. But nothing is what investors priced-in and what Lamplighter paid for it and the news did get investors excited about the shares.
   Planet wasn't the only AI win. A handful of other companies in the portfolio benefited directly or indirectly from AI spending.

Final score: two for three. In most of investing, getting things a little bit more right than wrong delivers great results over the long term. That framework played out nicely this year.

Disclaimer: None of this is investment advice. It's meant to illustrate ways LCM thinks about investing. Things that LCM decides are good investments for LCM and its clients are based on many criteria, not all of which are covered here. Some or all of LCM's ideas may not be suitable for other investors. LCM does not recommend investing either long or short any position mentioned. LCM may own positions in some of the companies mentioned. Some of its ideas will lose money — investing entails risk. See full disclaimer here.